The aim was to celebrate and preserve culinary heritage by collecting recipes across South African cultures. These recipes reflected diverse cultural backgrounds, languages, and personal histories, offering a rich base of content to work from. The title Mother Tongue plays on the connection between language, tradition, and food - the way recipes are passed down through generations, often taught verbally or in a family’s first language. It acknowledges that food, like language, carries culture, memory, and identity, and that preserving the original words alongside the dishes is part of protecting that heritage. The result is a cookbook that embraces diversity in content and presentation while feeling unified, approachable, and rooted in the personal stories that fill the pages.